Page 58 of Love Heals
Chapter Twenty
All this time I'd been wondering what I'd do with my new-found freedom... To be honest, I wasn't totally proud of the first decision I made. I spent an hour or two flying around the city, enjoyed the cool night-air under my wings, and then I found myself navigating toward the east side.
Where my sire's house used to be.
I didn't really think about it. It was almost as if something was pulling me there, like a magnet telling me where to go. Idly, I wondered if this was what real birds felt like when they started their journey south in the winter.
When I found the building, I circled it for a while. From the outside, it looked exactly as it used to—and why shouldn't it? The world wasn't mourning the death of my sire. He hadn't been a good man.
I flew toward the window, trying to peek inside, except there wasn't much to see. Of course not.
Making my way toward the front door, I tried not to think about exactly what I was doing, what was possessing me. My mind flashed back to the beach, to the idea of finding some sort of closure.
Was that what I was looking for?
There was definitely something ironic about me breaking into the house I used to want to escape from. When was it that I'd stopped viewing this place as my prison?
In front of the door, I changed back into my more human form. The shift was almost as jolting as it was when I did it the other way around, only in the opposite direction. Instead of becoming smaller, all of me seemed to expand, until arms replaced my wings and I found myself standing on human feet again, my muscles burning the way they would after a mild work-out.
The door gave easily when I pushed. Although I wasn't strong, I was still a vampire, and this door had never been designed to withstand vampires. Nicolai hadn't kept me here by way of locks.
The inside of the house looked exactly the way I remembered it. The dark leather ottoman near the door, the rustic wine rack in the living room, the cedar book cases… Everything seemed almost painfully familiar. I'd last been here only two weeks ago, but it felt as if it might as well have been a life-time ago.
The place stillsmelledlike my sire. Old and earthy. The scent in the air was subtle, but it was there. I shook it off, unsure how to feel about it as I made my way up the stairs, trying not to look at the framed photographs on the wall. They were all fake, of people Nicolai didn't even know. They were there to fool visitors, nothing more.
Not that Nicolai ever got many visitors, aside from me.
Did I even count as visitor? No, I hadn't been a visitor, I'd been a pet.
Standing on the top landing, I cast my gaze around. How many days had I spent here? How many years?
I wasn't actually sure. Jared would know.
The thought of Jared sent a painful jolt through my chest, so I let it go.
My feet carried me to the master bedroom. Though I didn't need the light to see by, I flicked the switch next to the door. Fully illuminated, the room looked deceptively normal. Aside from the empty bird cage that sat right next to the bed and made my stomach roll.
The cage was golden, because of course it was.
I hated it.
Stomping over to the bed, I tore the sheets off it and threw them over the cage.
Nicolai hadn't locked me in it often, but every now and then, he seemed to think it was funny.My sweet little canary,I heard his voice in my head, making me shudder. I closed my eyes, trying to shake it off. Nicolai was dead. He wasn't here with me calling me stupid names. He was never coming back.
I let myself fall back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
What was I doing here?
How wasthisthe place I found myself going when I could have gone literally anywhere?
Something on the bedside table caught my eyes. A flat device. Nicolai's tablet. I grabbed it, tearing it off its charger. Nicolai had secured it with a pin code, but I'd seen him use it so many times it was no problem to unlock the tablet. Lucky for me, Nicolai had never seen me as a threat—or a person with a brain, really.
Once the tablet was unlocked, the screen blew up with notifications. Various messages from various group chats and other messaging applications. I fumbled a little, unsure exactly how to navigate a device like this. I thought maybe I used to have a phone back when I was mortal and still living with my parents, but that was so long ago that the knowledge wasn't helping me now.
Eventually, I managed to open one of the messenger apps. It had a green logo and a little red dot over it, telling me there were new texts for me to read.
Nicolai was a part of several conversations, and not all of them had bothered to kick him out after his death. I tapped on the one with the most unread messages. I thought I recognized some of the names of the people participating. Vampires from our coven. Some of them high-ranking.
